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CDPyRICHT DEPOSIT. 



BEDROCK 

Education and Employment, the Foundation of the Republic 



BEDROCK 

Education and Employment^ 

the Foundation of the 

Republic 



BY .-" 

ANNIE L. DIGGS 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE SOCIAL CENTER PUBLISHING CO. 

DETROIT, MICHIGAN 



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v\^ 



Copyright, 1912, 
By ANNIE L. DIGGS 



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©CI.A32844J8 



CONTENTS 

A Foreword vii 

I The Theory i 

II The Argument .... 3 

III The Proposition Stated . . 9 

IV The Evolution of Education . 11 

V Organization of the Employ- 
ment Bureau . . . .21 

VI Suggestions to Committees . 27 

VII The Agricultural Committee . 31 

VIII Industrial Barracks . . .37 

IX Farm Villages .... 41 

V 



vi CONTENTS 

X The Social Center Movement 47 

XI The Ethical Mission of the 

Employment Bureau . . 53 

XII Points to Remember , , .65 



FOREWORD 

The system that this little book is 
designed to establish was not idly con- 
ceived or hastily set forth. For a quarter 
of a century I have been a serious student, 
both in the United States and in Europe 
— oftentimes an active participant in 
movements and measures that gave 
promise of relief to conditions that bear 
heavily on the lives of my fellow beings. 

For many years it has been to me an 
intolerable thought that the misery borne 
by men and women and children resulting 
from deprivation of the necessaries of 
life would be permitted to continue. The 
raw material exists in superabundance, 
merely awaiting intelligent and humane 
supervision to be converted into more 
than ample provision for all human 
needs. 

vii 



vlii FOREWORD 

The broad, rich earth yields generously 
all the good things that are essential to 
the upbuilding of strong, healthful bodies 
of men. There is not the slightest reason 
existent in nature for the blighting 
deprivation that enervates the bodies, 
embitters the feelings and corrupts the 
morals of a vast percentage of mankind. 
There is no reason except the lack of 
scientific management addressed to the 
correction of our industrial chaos. 

The time is ripe for the inauguration 
of a remedial method so designed as to 
eventually compass the entire situation 
and afiford universal relief. 

It is none too soon to begin a v^ork 
that will command the confidence and 
allay the bitterness of those who feel 
themselves the victims of injustice. 

There is a sincere desire among large 
numbers of the wealthy and well-circum- 



FOREWORD ix 

stanced classes to alleviate the distress and 
permanently better the condition of those 
who suffer and those whose labor is 
inadequately recompensed. 

I am not unaware that there are already 
in operation many agencies directed to 
the alleviation of distress and to the solu- 
tion of the industrial problem. 

I am not unfamiliar with the political 
trend that will some day transform our 
government into a promoter of universal 
justice and opportunity. 

Nevertheless, I present the plan out- 
lined in this little book as one that may be 
at once begun and that will never become 
superfluous, no matter what beneficient 
changes may result from progress along 
any line. There is in this plan no possi- 
bility of future collision with any con- 
ceivable changes in the industrial oi^ 
social system. 



X FOREWORD 

There are thousands of eager, anxious 

persons in our country now, ready to lend 

a hand so soon as they become convinced 

that a proposed method is serviceable and 

sound. 

A. L. D. 



CHAPTER I 

THE THEORY 

The theory of the system herein pro- 
posed is based upon two fundamental 
facts that enter as vital factors into all 
social progress and into the development 
of human character. 

These two great essentials are EDU- 
CATION and EMPLOYMENT. 

Without education — without the quick- 
ening and training of the intellect 
mankind would still be loitering in his 
primitive animalism. 

Without employment — without the 
activity and the deftness of human hands 



2 BEDROCK 

in all lines of individual and social enter- 
prise mere "Education" would be futile. 
Hence, the supplement — the aftermath 
of intellectual training is "Employment." 
Here, then, we have the two talismanic 
words — Education, Employment — that 
stand for civilization. These two funda- 
mentals constitute the Bedrock of all 
human progress and all individual satis- 
faction with life. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ARGUMENT 

Without any question, the one estab- 
lished fact that enlists the widest interest, 
the loyalty and pride of the citizens of the 
United States is our public school system. 
Any attempt to subvert or to change its 
democratic basis would meet with over- 
whelming rebuke. And all this devotion, 
all this loyalty is held in the full face of 
the fact that as yet the public schools are 
far from being the promoters of efficiency 
that they will become. They are very 
far from having reached the ideals of the 
most thoughtful men and women of our 
3 



4 BEDROCK 

great republic. In no circles is this fact 
of the lack of many things more keenly 
realized than among the earnest body 
of educators. The evolutionary forces 
already at work to produce a higher 
degree of efficiency and equipment for 
the practical business of life by our public 
schools will in the not far future correct 
their limitations and may certainly be 
counted on to produce results unsurpassed 
in splendid service to the pupils and to 
our great body politic. 

Our public schools are an established 
fact that rests on one essential in the 
development of human character and 
social betterment. The theory upon 
which our public school system is based 
and which moved its promoters in the 
days of its small beginnings is that a 
despotic government may afford a con- 
tingent of ignorant citizens, but that a 



^ BEDROCK 5 

republic in order to endure must have 
educated citizens. An ignorant, mentally 
deficient number of citizens is a menace 
to free government. 

The danger arising from an ignorant 
citizenship is twofold: first, the ignorant 
are the victims of their own limitations, 
and second, they tempt the keener mem- 
bers of society to exploit them. There is 
no safety, no assured perpetuity of the 
republic save through universal educa- 
tion. So certain is it that the entire 
fabric of our government would be 
jeopardized were the education of its 
youth left to the vicissitudes of private 
enterprise that taxation and legislation 
provide for public management and sup- 
port of institutions of learning. 

Precisely the same theory as related to 
the welfare and the perpetuity of our 
republic that is at the core of our system 



6 BEDROCK 

of education is also at the core of the 
industrial problem. 

The republic is not safe with an 
ignorant citizenship. Likewise, the re- 
public is not safe with an unemployed 
citizenship. It will not do to leave 
education to the uncertainties or the 
fluctuations of private enterprise. An 
educated citizenship is so vital to the 
nation that legislation, national, state and 
local, is invoked to secure and develop it. 

Likewise, an employed citizenship is 
so vital to national health and national 
progress that there should speedily be 
set in motion the machinery of organi- 
zation to rescue industrialism from the 
disastrous fluctuations and dehumanizing 
uncertainty of our private, personal and 
unscientific regime. 

It is everywhere and every day appar- 
ent that education unsupplemented by 



BEDROCK 7 

employment stops short of full protection 
to society or to the individual. It is 
economic and ethical unwisdom to edu- 
cate and equip the youth of the nation 
and then precipitate them at the close of 
their school days into a social and indus- 
trial condition that fails to assure them 
of the application of their training. The 
irony of the situation is set forth in 
ghastly shape when both college-bred 
and manually trained men are found in 
bread lines, in the disheartened ranks of 
baffled seekers of employment, and in the 
last despairing throng who end it all by 
suicide. 

That which has been achieved by 
organized effort for EDUCATION can 
also be gained by organized effort for 
EMPLOYMENT, 



CHAPTER III 

THE PROPOSITION STATED 

The proposition is: 

To establish a Bureau of Employment 
in connection with each and every Edu- 
cational institution throughout the wide 
domain of the Republic of the United 
States. 

The task of the schools is to create 
efficiency: The function of the Bureau 
will be to secure Employment for each 
and every pupil coming from educational 
institutions. 

Thus will the two great essentials to 
human welfare move on together on a 
systematized basis. 

9 



lo BEDROCK 

It is not assumed that the proposition 
offers a speedy correction of industrial 
conditions that are our heritage from all 
past ages. There is no possible presto- 
change from any industrial or social 
condition. 

There can be no revolutionary right- 
about-face that can transform ignorance 
into enlightenment. 

You can't make a republic by killing 
a king. 

^ You cannot, says Emerson, have perfect 
unions without perfect units. 

An abiding and ennobling social life 
must be founded upon industrial and 
intellectual development. It must be the 
ripe product of experience and growth. 

But the great thing, the inspiring thing, 
is to make the beginning, and to make it 
with a definite, well-ordered and scientific 
plan. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION 

At the outset the small number of men 
and women actively engaged in the 
Employment Bureau work may appear 
almost ludicrously inadequate to the 
mighty purpose of the work, and there 
will be a multitude of skeptics and objec- 
tors. When the public school system 
made its first bow to the general public it 
was greeted with howls of derision, and 
there was unspeakable distress lest a 
something had been evoked that would 
shatter the existing social fabric. 

The popular and universal education 
II 



12 BEDROCK 

hoped for by its promoters had the press 
and the public largely hostile or indiffer- 
ent. In 1829, when a group of men, 
nearly all of whom were manual laborers, 
weavers, tailors, mechanics of Boston, 
Philadelphia and New York, organized 
for the purpose of getting "free public 
schools, where the children of rich and 
poor could attend on an equal footing," 
the proposition was hooted at. A public 
meeting called to discuss the proposition 
in Philadelphia, at the old City Hall, 
was broken up by the police and the 
speakers arrested and taken to jail. 

The New York Evening Post of that 
day called on "the bankers, the preachers, 
the merchants and other respectable 
members of society" to organize to put 
down "this pernicious agitation which 
threatens to undermine the very founda- 
tion of societv." 



BEDROCK 13 

It is doubtful if, in the entire nation, 
there is now another daily paper that 
uses so much space in fine furtherance of 
the interests of the American schools as 
does the New York Post of today. 

Today there is a thousand million 
dollars invested in our public schools, 
and this sum does not include the many 
millions spent every year for salaries of 
teachers, for books and other school 
expenses. Thus far along its glorious 
way has "Education" marched, and now 
the time is ripe for the forward march of 
that other great essential, "Employment." 

There will, however, be no opposition 
to this system of employment such as 
barred the way to the establishment of 
our system of education. Thanks to the 
growth of general intelligence and to a 
rapidly growing democracy the sentiment 
is well-nigh universal favoring conditions 



14 BEDROCK 

that afford the fullest employment of 
each and all of our citizens. Public dis- 
course, private concern and that greatest 
promoter of progress, the public press, 
continually augment the sentiment that 
tends to the systematic establishment of 
industry — of "employment" upon a scien- 
tific and secure basis. 

The radical changes operating in the 
conduct of the public schools, and the gen- 
eral sentiment sustaining these changes, 
does not necessarily mean the abandon- 
ment of high ideals of scholarship, nor 
any diminution of regard for the higher 
education. It simply means a shifting 
process that will eventually result in a 
vastly increased appreciation and appro- 
priation of the finest possible intellectual 
culture. 

Unready, unwilling youth will not 
have its capacity overtaxed; instead, the 



BEDROCK 15 

maturer years following the activities of 
useful, wholesome industry will crave 
the keen delights of fuller intellectual 
quest. 

The following instances of the changes 
in the public schools are typical of the 
general trend: 

The superintendent of the Cleveland 
public schools will soon introduce most 
radical changes in the school curriculum. 
While the academic studies will not be 
wholly side-tracked, the whole trend of 
the teaching will be along commercial 
lines, with the idea of teaching the child 
the things that will mean bread and 
butter to him. 

The change will take place in the 
fourth or fifth year of schooling. The 
time devoted to academic studies in the 
earlier years will in this year and the 



i6 BEDROCK 

other three or four years be cut more 
than half, the time so saved being utilized 
in teaching the child the rudiments of 
trades and crafts. 

For the boys, shops will be installed 
with all the necessary machinery and in 
charge of competent instructors. They 
will be drilled in the intricacies of the 
different trades, both through books and 
the technical knowledge gained by work- 
ing in the shops. The girls will be 
tutored in household duties, part of each 
day being devoted to teaching them how 
to sew, cook, sweep, dust, and how to 
arrange a home in an artistic manner. 

The Chicago Board of Trade has let 
the contract for two huge high schools. 
They are planned along lines that sug- 
gest an educational revolution and a new 
conception of the social use and meaning 
of a public school. 



BEDROCK 17 

Each of these schools will occupy an 
entire city block, and will contain an 
assembly hall suitable for general public 
purposes and having seats for two thou- 
sand persons. 

Besides the ordinary class rooms, there 
will be physical, chemical and electrical 
laboratories, machine shops, swimming 
pools, gymnasiums and restaurants. There 
will be museums of biology and commer- 
cial geography, greenhouses for the study 
of plant life, libraries, periodical reading 
rooms, music halls, studios for sculpture, 
painting and the artistic handicrafts, 
bookbinding shops, photographic gal- 
leries with developing rooms, bank and 
business offices for practical work, and 
halls for assembly and dancing. 

The New York State department of 
education has recently provided for a six- 



i8 BEDROCK 

year elementary course of study to be fol- 
lowed by three alternative courses leading 
to business, to trades, or to college prep- 
aration. 

Dr. Andrew S. Draper, the New York 
State commissioner of education, urges 
that the schools must be no less concerned 
about the industrial than the intellectual 
education. 

Dr. Draper further says: 

'When but one-third of the children re- 
main to the end of the elementary course 
in a country where education is such a uni- 
versal passion, there is something the 
matter with the public schools. 

"When half of the men who are re- 
sponsible for the business activities, and 
who are guiding the political life of the 
country, tell us that children from the ele- 
mentary schools are not able to do definite 



BEDROCK 19 

things required in the world's real affairs, 
there is something the matter with the 
schools. 

"When work seeks workers, and young 
men and women are indifferent to it, or do 
not know how to do it, there is something 
the matter with the schools." 

The managers of manufacturing and 
commercial enterprises are reiterating 
their desire to cooperate with the schools 
and to look to them for their recruiting 
forces. 

Agricultural schools, schools of Domes- 
tic Science, Vocational Schools and Tech- 
nical Schools are alive with the fervor of 
desire to turn out efficient workers. 

In the very nature of the case the estab- 
lishment of Employment Bureaus will 
prove to be a great incentive to these most 
desirable changes in our schools. 



20 BEDROCK 

The Bureau will be the medium of 
communication, and the promoter of co- 
operation between the business and the 
commercial world and the schools having 
in charge the preparation of their pupils 
for the best possible service to society. 



CHAPTER V 

ORGANIZATION OF THE EMPLOYMENT 
BUREAU 

It is a familiar fact that in every com- 
munity there are numbers of public-spir- 
ited men and women who are eager to 
render voluntary service to any movement 
promotive of social welfare. 

It is to such persons that this message is 
addressed. 

At the outset the workers will be volun- 
teers. Only those who are moved by the 
sense of desire to promote a great move- 
ment will engage in it. Those whose 
imaginations are quickened by a longing 
to serve humanity will perceive in this 

21 



22 BEDROCK 

work the high patriotism that seeks to pro- 
vide for future generations better ways of 
living, even as their own progenitors 
wrought and sacrificed that the world 
might be a better place for the men and 
women of today. It was for the sake of 
their children that the pioneers of the 
public schools made their sacrificial ef- 
forts. 

HOW TO BEGIN 

A mere handful of men and women 
may meet in a home parlor and take the 
first step in organization. An expression 
of views and a discussion of various ways 
and means to be employed in that partic- 
ular locality will precede any formal 
attempt to organize. A temporary secre- 
tary of this informal meeting should 
furnish the press with a statement relative 
to the purpose of the work. Provision for 



BEDROCK 23 

a succeeding meeting should be made and 
a speaker who can clearly, pointedly and 
briefly state the purposes and the large 
scope of the movement should be selected. 
A discussion following will generate en- 
thusiasm that will develop strength and 
enlist numbers sufficient to warrant a per- 
manent organization. 

The official list of a completed Bureau 
of Employment should comprise: 

A Chief of the Employment Bureau. 

Recording and Corresponding Secre- 
taries. 

A Committee on Conference with the 
local Board of Education. 

A Committee on Conference with the 
local School Teachers. 

A Committee on Publication and Prop- 
aganda. 

A Committee to communicate with 



24 BEDROCK 

Municipal Authorities relative to 
employment on Public Works. 

A Committee on Lectures. 

A Committee on Agriculture. 

A Committee on Domestic Service. 

A Committee on Communication with 
Commercial Bodies. 

A Committee on Communication with 
Manufacturers. 

A Committee on Communication with 
existing Employment Agencies. 

A Committee to secure information 
from Public Documents relative to 
Educational and Industrial Progress. 

A Committee on Counsel and Confer- 
ence with pupils in course of prep- 
aration for their future Vocations. 

A Recorder who shall list the Pupils 
and designate the work or service for 
which they are in training. 



BEDROCK 25 

The initial organizations should be left 
free as to many details in order to be 
adaptive to the local situations that will 
vary greatly in rural districts, in small 
towns, and in the larger cities. 

As soon as possible a permanent home 
and meeting place should be secured for 
the Employment Bureau through the 
School Board at each local school house. 

The experience and intelligence of 
Bureau workers will frequently suggest 
new modes of operation to meet the 
changing conditions of education and 
industry. 



CHAPTER VI 

SUGGESTIONS TO COMMITTEES 

A wealth of material suggestive of 
practical application awaits the observa- 
tion of members of committees covering 
any of the special lines of Bureau work. 

It is immensely convincing as to the 
ripeness of time and the wide-spread 
readiness for this homogeneous movement 
to note the success of numberless sporadic 
and organically unrelated enterprises de- 
signed to develop efficiency in productive 
industry. It is also most encouraging to 
note the multiplication of both public and 
private employment agencies. 
27 



28 BEDROCK 

The Committee on Domestic Service 
will perhaps be the first to obtain results. 
Incalculable good will grow out of the 
fostering care that pupils in this line may 
receive. The vexatious domestic service 
situation will receive dignified, scientific 
treatment when those who serve come 
from the ranks of educated, trained 
pupils. 

The Committee on Propaganda should 
seek to have the purposes of the Bureau 
brought before educational conventions, 
women's clubs, social science gatherings 
and other hospitable organizations. 

The cooperation of the city and country 
school boards should be solicited. 

Parlor lectures are most effective. In 
cities where a public school lecture course 
is maintained, a place on the lecture list 
should be sought. 



BEDROCK 29 

Perhaps the most soul-satisfying and 
also the most delicate work will fall to the 
men and women who will be placed in 
communication with pupils relative to 
their choice of vocations and the placing 
of them in situations. A vast field of 
blessed ministration and of personal in- 
fluence, second only to that of the grand 
army of school teachers, is before the 
Bureau workers who will thus be brought 
into intimate counsel with young people. 

The route of the Employment Bureau 
workers will not lie along the path of 
martyrdom. A hospitable sentiment is 
latent, awaiting the definite appeal of 
action. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEE 

No Other committee in the entire 
Bureau will be charged with a work so 
comprehensive and so rich in material 
and moral results as the committee on 
land cultivation. One of the most satis- 
factory features of modern progress is the 
attention given to improved farm methods 
and to improvements and modern con- 
veniences in farm homes. 

In the State of Kansas alone, where the 

proportion of farmers who are enjoying 

more conveniences, and even luxuries, is 

larger than that of any other State in the 

31 



32 BEDROCK 

Union, there are four hundred High 
Schools teaching agriculture. Kansas 
also has an Agricultural College where 
the students are given the advantage of 
experimental work of the greatest value. 

Throughout the entire West and South 
the keenest interest is taken in the 
Farmer's Institutes, in Experiment Sta- 
tion work, and in the scientific lectures 
and practical instruction given by the 
traveling farm schools. 

The "Young Corn Growers" of the 
South and West have had the fostering 
care of State and National officials. The 
remarkable success resulting from the 
supervised and scientific work done by 
these boys has created intense interest and 
it is predicted that the improved methods 
will revolutionize farm work. 

The Bureau Committee on Agriculture 
should be alert to gain information 



BEDROCK 33 

relative to these special instances and 
endeavor to arouse enthusiasm among 
pupils who may be induced to devote 
themselves to that greatest of all human 
industries — land cultivation. 

The work of this Committee will thus 
become educative, and will generate 
that zealous application and practical 
efficiency that will eventually ensure 
employment. 

Simultaneously with the interest in 
specialized training, there arises the con- 
sciousness of the need of its utilization, 
and the further need of intelligent, sym- 
pathetic agencies ready to secure employ- 
ment for the skillful workers. 

In Oregon, 50,000 children are busy 
gardening. The State Superintendent of 
Public Instruction started the children in 
this work and he has received enthusiastic 
support from public and private sources. 



34 BEDROCK 

The little gardeners are thus early im- 
bued with a sense of the dignity of manual 
labor and they also receive the physical 
benefits and the moral inspiration of out- 
of-door life. 

A most important service can be per- 
formed by this committee in gathering 
and imparting information relative to the 
Farm Villages of Europe. 

One of the serious drawbacks to agri- 
cultural life is the isolation of the homes 
of the farmers. 

The success of the Pingree vacant lot 
culture proved that children and adults 
will gladly and profitably engage in rais- 
ing vegetables. 

This Committee should seek to cooper- 
ate with State agencies and independent 
organizations that endeavor to supply to 
the farmers, from the ranks of the unem- 
ployed, farm hands at harvest time, in 



BEDROCK 35 

fruit-picking season, and also the securing 
of permanent helpers. 

The Bureau Committee on Land Cul- 
ture should consist of "land enthusiasts" 
who could be relied on to foster all 
endeavors tending to train the workers, as 
well as to secure work, for all tillers of 
the soil. 



CHAPTER VIII 

INDUSTRIAL BARRACKS 

There is within the radius of a few 
miles of every city and town in the United 
States unused land that might be placed 
at the disposal of the Employment Bureau 
for the purpose of demonstrating what 
can be done by Intensive agriculture. 

This enterprise might be carried on by 
the labor of the pupils of the public 
schools working under the direction of 
competent persons, and it would serve the 
double purpose of education and remu- 
nerative production. 

37 



38 BEDROCK 

In France, where the best methods are 
used, the farmer measures his land by 
feet and yards. The backyard gardens 
of France produce the bulk of the food 
eaten by their owners. 

On the ground of this School Experi- 
ment Station there might be erected a 
building, inexpensive, yet not unsightly, 
for the living accomodation of a portion 
of those engaged in the work. Two sea- 
sons of application could transform a 
bald, unattractive place into one bright 
with the beauty of vines and flowers. The 
adornments that nature yields should be 
cultivated as the crown jewels of utility 
and material production. 

There is no limit to the possibilities of 
human helpfulness that could grow out 
of these School Experiment Stations. The 
buildings could become the Barracks and 
home anchorages of many industrial sol- 



BEDROCK 39 

diers. Properly managed, they could be 
made to serve as way stations for trained 
and graduated pupils in other lines of 
industry on the way to the permanent 
employment not speedily obtainable for 
them by the Employment Bureau. 

In many places in the West where 
pupils live at a distance from the school- 
house, conveyance is provided for them. 
This method could be used and the 
Experiment Station be utilized for the 
open-air schools so strenuously urged by 
Dr. Woods Hutchinson and by other 
critics of some features of our public 
schools as at present conducted. 



CHAPTER IX 

FARM VILLAGES 

What with rural free delivery, travel- 
ing libraries, telephones, automobiles and 
the possibility of all modern conveniences 
in the home of the prosperous farmer, 
there is little left to be desired except the 
one great desire for social life and for 
advantages that can only be had v^here 
many people live in close proximity. 

The grouping of farm homes in the 
Old World furnishes valuable directions 
for our own ''back to the land" people. 
The old-time farmer working after the 
fashions of generations before him sought 
41 



42 BEDROCK 

to cultivate the greatest obtainable num- 
ber of acres. The newer methods re- 
quiring fewer acres make possible the 
locating of the home buildings within a 
village area. * 

Grouped around the schoolhouse as the 
social center, the homes o-f market gar- 
deners, poultry-raisers, dairymen, fruit- 
growers and grain-raisers might cluster. 
^ The easy possibilities of most delightful 
social life lie within this plan. Lectures, 
entertainments and religious observance 
on Sundays in the schoolhouse would be 
within easy distance of the villagers. The 
glee club, church choir and bands of in- 
strumental music could be cultivated. 

Grouped about a parked center con- 
taining the band-stand, these modest yet 
artistic country houses could look out on a 
broad, beautiful lawn generously sup- 



BEDROCK 43 

plied with seats and lined with flower- 
bordered promenades. 

All of these things could be had in one 
or two seasons if the "back to nature" 
people could pool sufficient capital, but 
lacking money there would be merely the 
necessity for more time to carry out the 
design. 

There is always the blessed provision 
for the building of the greatest feature in 
the case, that is the public schoolhouse. 

Of no less importance than the social 
side, this plan would furnish protection 
and that feeling of personal safety so often 
sadly lacking in the isolated country 
home. On the business side there lies the 
substantial benefits resulting from co- 
operation in marketing products and in 
wholesale buying. 

The motor truck conveying the produce 
direct to market could also be employed 



44 BEDROCK 

to carry the grain-raisers and other 
workers to their more distant fields. 

In addition to the purely agricultural 
character of the rural village, manufac- 
turing and the interchange service that 
the larger village would require is en- 
tirely practical. 

A special committee of the Employ- 
ment Bureau could render no greater 
service to the hosts of chartless people 
now seeking escape from the burdens and 
the unwholesome conditions of city life 
than to study the Garden Cities of Eng- 
land, at Bourneville, Port Sunlight, and 
elsewhere, together with the farm vil- 
lages in Hungary and in other European 
states and placing the inspiring informa- 
tion, together with practical suggestion, 
for their own use before the public, 

A rural village developed by this fos- 
tering oversight should always include 



BEDROCK 45 

the "Industrial Barrack" building as a 
place of sojourn and temporary or special 
employment for public school pupils. 

Should the reader of the foregoing sug- 
gestions incline to cold scepticism, or 
stranger still, to indulge in a desire to be 
facetious, let him but acquaint himself 
with the long list of tragic happenings 
that follow the path of the countless 
throng of young men and women, who, 
lured by the social lights of the cities, 
leave the farm because of its lack of just 
such things of sentiment and beauty as 
can be furnished by the Farm Village. 



CHAPTER X 

THE SOCIAL CENTER MOVEMENT 

The School Social Center movement 
has been thought of, talked of and writ- 
ten about until it has reached the stage 
of local and national organization. It 
has its roots in a great social need that 
aims to unify and to thus render effective 
many things related to social improve- 
ment and individual welfare that with- 
out such unification would move halt- 
ingly along the path of progress. 

Starting out upon the sound proposi- 
tion that the schoolhouses of the nation 
are the logical and the most available 
centers of local effort for the enlighten- 

47 



48 BEDROCK 

ment of the adult population In matters 
pertaining to human advancement, its 
propagandists make a clear call to the 
public to note the fact that school build- 
ings belonging^ to the public are not 
utilized to anything like their capacity 
for educational or social purposes. Day 
schools for the young by no means exhaust 
the possibilities of the schoolhouse. There 
are the evenings and the school vacation 
seasons when many facilities for adult 
occupancy are afforded. 

In several large cities, night schools 
and free public lectures are most success- 
fully conducted. In the country it is no 
new thing to turn to the schoolhouses as 
the available social center. Lectures, 
literary societies, entertainments, reli- 
gious services and political meetings find 
the public schoolhouses open to them. 



BEDROCK 49 

The Social Centerist seeks to introduce 
the country usage into city practice. Fie 
fervently declares his belief, not only in 
the facility for the promotion of benefi- 
cent enterprises, but also in a larger 
realization of human brotherhood result- 
ant from the neighborly spirit engendered 
by frequency of meeting in the local 
schoolhouse. 

One reproach of city life is the cold 
aloofness of individuals from all save 
those of their own social set. The Social 
Centerist sees in the schoolhouse gather- 
ings a large corrective of this coldness. 
Within the precincts of every schoolhouse 
there reside families of various degrees 
of circumstance. It not infrequently 
transpires that the poorly circumstanced 
people are the most interesting person- 
ally. The growing evils of class distinc- 
tion and class consciousness would be 



50 BEDROCK 

greatly checked by the development of a 
neighborhood loyalty to such mutual in- 
terests as would promote personal ac- 
quaintance, sympathy and understanding. 
Even to those of mental as v^ell as ma- 
terial superiority there might come a rich 
harvest of the blessing of giving of their 
best in thought and good-will to their less 
fortunate neighbors. 

Mr. Boyd Fisher, a New York Social 
Centerist, says: "It is a neighbors' meet- 
ing, in the schoolhouse which they own, 
to discuss anything which affects them. 

"Class distinction certainly cannot be 
preserved in a schoolhouse. People go 
there to discuss sanitation, plumbing, 
streets, sidewalks, milk supply, or any 
subject of common interest. They go 
on a common footing, as citizens, and 
the citizenship spirit breaks out in 
enthusiasm." 



BEDROCK 51 

The Legislature of Wisconsin, reflect- 
ing the public sentiment created by 
Social Centerists, under the leadership of 
Professor Edward J. Ward, of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, has enacted a statute 
requiring all local school boards to open 
the schoolhouses for the discussion of 
public questions and for other purposes 
whenever requested to do so by any citi- 
zens' organization that is non-partisan, 
non-sectarian and non-exclusive. 

The Social Centerists will find among 
the School Employment Bureau workers 
their strongest allies. In fact, the two 
movements have close kinship and should 
cooperate in their organized capacity. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE ETHICAL MISSION OF THE EMPLOY- 
MENT BUREAU 

Citizens of the United States have rea- 
son to be proud of the splendid material 
progress of the country. Yet, it is sadly 
said, this same progress has been at cost of 
some fine traits of character, and of some 
sweet, old homely ways of half a century 
ago. 

Lavish expenditure and extravagant 
display among the wealthy classes have 
set up unwholesome standards and stimu- 
lated feverish desire to possess the things 
that dazzle. Youth says: "Dainty ap- 
parel, fine houses and artistic surround- 
53 



54J BEDROCK 

Ings appeal to our natural love of the 
beautiful; if we cannot buy this beauty 
with the wage of labor let us sharpen our 
wits and try other ways." 

The men of hard hands and aching 
backs, seeing the inequalities in living 
conditions, grow bitter and there is cleav- 
age in social life. The begrimed worker 
says: "I build the palaces, but Mine 
Own whom I fondly love may never live 
in one." And so the social gap widens 
and there is scepticism when religious 
teachers talk of the brotherhood of man. 

The men and women of hard hands 
and aching backs make answer to re- 
ligion : "How shall we keep our bodies fit 
temples for the indwelling Holy Spirit 
while we must live in dark, unsanitary 
houses, subsist on insufficient food, ex- 
haust our strength and sap our vitality by 
monotonous drudgery?" 



BEDROCK 55 

Over and above all other tortures that 
poverty entails is the awful feeling of un- 
certainty of parents concerning the future 
of their children. With great patience 
and sublime fortitude the father and 
mother will work out their own tasks and 
accept their own lot, but the fearsome 
future before their children hurts them 
worst of all. 

Before the men and women workers of 
the School Employment Bureaus there 
opens up a highway of service that will 
powerfully operate to restore the old-time 
faith in human brotherhood: They may 
hold up sweeter, simpler standards of 
living before the youth of our country; 
they may establish that blessed sense of 
security that assured employment affords. 
Not even to religion is the way so open 
to ministrations as to the workers of the 
Employment Bureaus. The Church is 



56 BEDROCK 

under suspicion of desire to upbuild its 
own edifice and the estranged and morbid 
toiler turns away. 

Politics is held to be largely a game 
played for self-interest and exploitation. 
The nature and adequacy of our govern- 
ment are widely questioned. 

A considerable proportion of our citi- 
zens do not confide in political promises, 
nor do they believe that legislation un- 
whipped of revolution will correct the 
maladjustments of our industrial com- 
mercial system. 

There is abroad in our country a cold 
fear lest the nation is moving toward the 
tragedy of physical conflict and the con- 
sequent destruction of even such measure 
of orderly conduct as is now maintained. 

Against this wide-spread dishearten- 
ment, against this cynical distrust, and 
against the awful unwisdom of revolt 



BEDROCK ^7 

there could be no stronger counter influ- 
ence than would emanate from the edu- 
cational institutions, the Employment 
Bureaus and the Social Center activities 
that would all be massed on the side of 
non-disruption and evolution. 

The atmosphere of our public schools 
has been overcharged with emphasis upon 
the value of purely intellectual training. 
As a result the aspirations of pupils have 
been mainly in the direction of the pro- 
fessions and aloof from the social needs 
of the handicrafts. 

The Establishment of Employment 
Bureaus will greatly accelerate the 
changes now so insistently recommended 
for the public schools, and will generate 
an atmosphere of strong and bracing re- 
spect for manual labor. The ideals and 
aspirations of pupils will include excel- 



5» BEDROCK 

lence and success along all the lines es- 
sential to production and the crafts. 

It is none too soon to begin the great 
work of social regeneration by way of 
individual and localized appeal and close 
personal efifort. 

The fine neighborliness that years 
agone characterized our American life 
can be restored by the warm interest that 
will spring from association. The little 
refinements that make winsome and gra- 
cious the everyday conduct will supplant 
rudeness, flippancy and irreverence when 
there is social converse such as may be 
held in all the cities, towns and rural 
school centers in our beloved land. 

The simpler life will surely spring 
from neighborly mingling of the richer 
with their poorer human kin. 

The ostentation and the arrogance of 
the rich will die of shame in the presence 



BEDROCK 59 

of the poor. The grotesque, tawdry and 
most pitiful attempts of the poor to imi- 
tate will cease for lack of models. 

Not to the poorer ones alone will the 
rich blessings of schoolhouse neighborli- 
ness come. To those whose unsatisfied 
lives have been wasted in frivolity because 
they knew no better program will come 
the larger riches. 

The world seems very cold and hard 
to the dispossessed and to those whose 
days stand for drudgery. There are 
everywhere men and women, not old in 
years, yet aged by hardships, whose very 
souls are sick; they need — ah, how they 
need — not charity — for shame not that — 
but guidance to self-help and the reign of 
justice in the land. 

With the nation-wide attention con- 
stantly directed by the activities of School 
Employment Bureaus to the vital need of 



6o BEDROCK 

employment for the educated, self-re- 
specting young men and women of the 
public schools, there would arise a vast 
desire among the people to so arrange 
and adjust the industries and all social 
service as to furnish opportunity for all. 
What room is there for doubt that, in a 
time not tragically distant, American in- 
telligence will devise ways and means to 
use the country's superabundant natural 
resources for the common good? 

It might easily be that child labor, 
sweat-shops, foul tenements and other 
cruel things would disappear when the 
awakened conscience of the people of 
each Social Center ached hard enough to 
set their brains moving toward the prac- 
tical solution of industrial problems. 

The Employment Bureaus will say to 
the business world : "Here are a fine, com- 
petent lot of young Americans just grad- 



BEDROCK 6i 

uated from our vocational schools." Will 
the business world long continue to invite 
these young recruits into the sweat-shop 
or into a business conducted on a basis 
so narrow as to offer a wage below the 
line of decent living? Will the business 
world much longer say: "Come, ye splen- 
did young men and women that are to 
carry on the destiny of our glorious re- 
public, come into our factories and com- 
pete with hollow-cheeked, waxen-faced 
children"? Oh, no; answers of that sort 
will not be made very many more shame- 
ful years. 

Our nation must, if it would save its 
soul alive, provide an industrial system 
that will not permit even one of its little 
ones to fall through the crevice beneath 
which yawns an abyss now tragically 
filled with human wrecks out of work and 
out of hope. 



62 BEDROCK 

Not many long years hence our recast 
public schools will so multiply as to hold 
and educate every child in our great re- 
public. Coextensive with our nation- 
wide education there must go a sane and 
scientific system of employment. 

And so the Kingdom of Work will 
come to its own. 

Work is part of the bread of life. 
Work is the demand of the child, the de- 
light of the youth, the satisfaction of ma- 
ture years, and the comfort of old age. 

Work is not alone social service. It is 
social sanitation and salvation. 

"The balm of sorrow is a busy life, 
The flower of living is some work to do." 

How more than unwise, then, to longer 
deny to this great fundamental that su- 
pervision upon which efficiency, adapta- 
tion and universal application rest. 



BEDROCK 63 

And why not all this and more than 
the best of forecasts can tell? 

Is not humanity divine in origin and 
essence? Do not men and women like 
to do good things when you give them 
half a chance? 



CHAPTER XII 

POINTS TO REMEMBER 

The establishment of School Employ- 
ment Bureaus will be a continual re- 
minder to the public and to the public 
schools that our system of education 
should be largely recast in order to meet 
the urgent demand for efficiency in vo- 
cational training. 

* * * 

The work of the Employment Bureau 
will make enormous appeal to the con- 
science and the intellect of the nation 
relative to the necessity for providing full 

65 



66 BEDROCK 

opportunity and humane conditions for 
the toilers of the nation. Whatever is 
archaic, inadequate or unjust in the in- 
dustrial realm will be corrected when the 
general intelligence and desire of the 
people are enlisted in the solution of our 
industrial problems. 

* * * 

Without doubt the agencies already in 
operation for the promotion of scientific 
agriculture will eventually solve the 
problem of the high cost of living that 
baffles the economists of our day. Em- 
ployment Bureaus will devote especial 
energy to the fostering of the ''back to the 
land" endeavor. 

* * * 

The Employment Bureau, through its 



BEDROCK 67 

localized activities, will eventually re- 
individualize our national life and restore 
the old-time spirit of neighborliness in 
communities. 

* * * 

The Employment Bureau in its broad 
efifect will vitalize a sense of human kin- 
ship. It will develop local friendships, 
check the wanderlust and stimulate a 
patriotic devotion to the nation whose 
institutions prove beyond all doubt a gen- 
uine interest in the well-being and the 
high character of its citizens. 

* * * 

In the not far distant day the school- 
house will offer to every youth in all the 
nooks and corners of our broad land 
facilities for the development of his in- 



69 BEDROCK 

tellect and the best training for his life 
work. Along with this high service of 
the nation to each individual will go as 
a matter of course the definite oppor- 
tunity to devote the trained faculties of 
the pupil to his own maintenance and to 
his part in the social service of his day 
and time. Education and Employment 
must become coextensive and coexistent. 

* * * 

The inauguration of Employment 
Bureaus will be at the first conducted by 
volunteer workers, but eventually the 
system will become an integral part of 
the public school system of the entire 

nation. 

* * * 

The Manhattan Trade School for 
Girls, 209 East 23d Street, New York 



BEDROCK 69 

City, during four years of successful 
operation is a complete object lesson 
establishing the workable nature of the 
("Bedrock" proposition. The school is 
now a part of the public school work of 
New York City. 

* * * 

The Intercollegiate Bureau of Occu- 
pations, 38 West 32d Street, New York 
City, is now in its second year of rapidly 
increasing usefulness, both as an efficiency 
promoting and an employment agency 
for college graduates. 

* * * 

The President of the National Social 
Center Association is Josiah Strong. His 
address is : Bible House, New York City. 

Prof. Edward J. Ward, the founder 



70 BEDROCK 

and promoter of the Schoolhouse Social 
Center movement, may be addressed for 
information at Wisconsin University, 
Madison, Wisconsin. 

The Chairman of the Social Center 
Department of Employment Bureaus is 
Annie L. Diggs, Detroit, Michigan. 

The National Organizer of School 
Employment Bureaus is Cora G. Lewis, 
Kinsley, Kansas. 



i\3V IS 8S!^ 



